Lecturer on Political Theory

Yascha Mounk is a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard University's Government Department, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund, and a Nonresident Fellow at New America's Political Reform Program.

Yascha's primary research interests lie in political theory and comparative politics. His first academic book, The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice and the Welfare State, will be published by Harvard University Press in Spring 2017. It is based on his dissertation, which he completed in spring 2015 at Harvard University's Government Department.

Yascha is now working on the crisis of liberal democracy. His papers on the rise of populism and the growing openness of citizens of democratic countries to authoritarian alternatives have been published by the Journal of Democracy and Foreign Affairs, among others. In his second academic book, which is under contract with Harvard University Press, and will also be translated into German and Korean, he argues that liberalism and democracy are coming apart, creating forms of both "illiberal democracy" and "undemocratic liberalism."

Yascha was born and raised in Germany and has lived in England, France and Italy. Before coming to Harvard, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and Columbia University. He speaks fluent English, German, French, Italian, strong Polish, and has some basic Spanish and Latin.

Next to his scholarly work, Yascha occasionally writes about European and U.S. politics for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and appears on radio and television programs including CNN, NPR and the ARD. His first book, about the way in which memories of the Third Reich still shape contemporary German culture, domestic politics and foreign policy, was published in January 2014 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux (FSG) and by Kein und Aber in Germany in October 2015. For more information on his public writing, please consult his personal website.